My DeviantART story started just over 8 years ago when my friend James inspired me to look at this site. I didnt really class myself as a good artist and still dont and was intimidated by the site at first, but I gradually began to explore and met great people. Some of the first two people I met on here were and who inspired me to post my art and who I still talk to and class as my buddies today, 8 years later.

Some of my first art was drawn with a mouse-

my style has changed alot since then, especially on discovering the wonder of wacom tablets!

as ive slowly grown and developed with the help of all the wonderful people on this site. As DeviantArt celebrates its 14th Birthday, it also celebrates 14 years of bringing people together, and helping to push forward and develop the wide range of art that exists and develops.

DeviantART is more than an art site, its also a community. Where people help each other and share ideas. Meetup at Devmeets, talk together and become friends. Ive met alot of great people here and some have followed me for the entire 8 years ive been here. I make art because it makes me happy, but I also enjoy creating things that make other people happy.Without DeviantART it wouldnt be possible, so happy 14th Birthday DA! and many more to come

Ive been a bit quiet as ive been a bit busy! Ive been inspired by the trouble and adventures of my tortoise and my neighbours rabbit who are always upto mischief! to start (or try to start) a site to sell prints and cards illustrating their adventures!

Was hoping someone more knowlegeable than me might be able to help! If I have a nice bright picture, but I need to save it as a PNG, it loses its colours and turns into a faded, dull version.

Ive tried changing my colour from RGB to CMYK ive tried saving for web as PNG24. But it makes no difference, it looks fine in my folder on my computer but as soon as I upload it, the colour changes. I thought it was perhaps the site, but have seen other PNG's which have retained their bright colours! what am I doing wrong?

any help appreciated as ive been trying to do this for several hours now, and google didnt help me

Baahh! My problem wisdom tooth has broken a bit more! been twinging for a while and was hoping it was nothing as I couldnt see anything in the mirror. But now spotted its broken I do not think me or my bank balance will like my visit to the dentist tommrow! eep

My dentist told me off on the phone for not going in a year...! in fairness and in my defence I did have heart surgery in that time! I had other priorities!

ive had problems with this same tooth for the past 15 years, I would like it if they could just take it out

As some of you have noticed, I have been quiet quiet of late, this is due to being full into my Teacher Training. So unfortumately my art has had to sit on the back burner a little bit and taken over by lesson plans and paper work boo!

I am enjoying it alot, and the children and school are lovely. I just have to temporarily sacrifice my art. I will get back into it especially now I have a snazzy new super printer and I will need to do some art to add calm to my storm.

Ive also been really poorly as of late so this has taken up any spare time ive had.

After my heart surgery, my leg where the emergency surgery happened started to play up. Its alot stiffer than it was and im walking slower. Hopefully this is just a case of rebuilding my muscle. But because its weaker I have had alot of muscle injuries and spent my first week of teacher training on crutches! not the best start! The University was kind enough to take into consideration my pains and strains and found me a school close to home, which helps me alot.

My immune system has gone to pot as well! on top of my heart, and my legs I contracted some mysery virus which took the wind out of me big time. Normally whenever I have gotten ill, I have my trusted remedies. But they didnt touch it this time, in fact..nothing touched it. Nothing the chemist or the doctors could give me touched it. I have never ever gone to the doctors for a virus, but this one was different. But even they couldnt fix it. I could have gotten the new super strain (typical) Ive just had to let it run its course. dragging myself into school every day because I didnt want to miss a day. i worked so hard to get here im not letting a virus get in my way!

I feel better now and have booked myself in for a vaccination against anymore unwanted bugs!

Unfortunatly I also no longer have my job as I cant work and do my Teacher Training, so I will probably be opening for commissions at some point to give me a hand.

So yup this is where I have been hiding! surrounded by lots of children.

heres a list of some great artists and good friends of mine that you might want to check out ->

I have been quiet of late, as I developed a complication from my heart procedure whereby an abscess formed around my artery,and I also developed a condition called cellulitis. I had to have emergency surgery to remove the abscess and have been in hospital for the best part of a week

This happened very quickly, everything was fine uptil last sunday when I had a bit of a pain and my leg around the artery they went into for my heart procedure was a bit puffy. It went down again and I thought nothing of it, the next day it was double in size and bleeding so I went to the emergency doctor, I couldnt go back to the hospital i had the procedure as it was too far away so I rung them for advice and they told me to go to emergency doctor or A&E , the emergency doctor was closer. However they told me nothing was wrong and sent me away telling me to put ice on it.

Next morning it had gone from being the size of an egg to the size of a tennis ball, so I rung my hospital again who told me to go to the nearest A&E and they would scan it to see what the swelling was. Well they didnt scan it, they just looked at it and said it was infected and gave me some antibiotics and sent me away.

I gave the antibiotics 3 days to work but the lump just kept getting bigger so once again I ended up going to A&E, this time they took one look at it and admitted me. My doctor was very good and got someone to come in from home to scan it. Then they arranged surgery which got complicated due to my heart condition, as the procedure I had was too soon for the heart to have healed so there was concern that putting me under for surgery could be too dangerous. Eventually I had surgery and was released tuesday.

I have a nurse that has to come in every day to change some special dressings, unfortunately in doing so we have discovered another abscess/a bit they may have missed so if the special dressings havent made it go away by the weekend i may have to go back to hospital

not feeling 100% myself either atm, little under the weather and off my food a bit, hopefully be better soon

so all in all not having a good time of it at the moment

heres a list of some great artists and good friends of mine that you might want to check out ->

Well 3 days before Christmas, I had to go and see a specialist, who ran some more tests including hooking me up to a treadmill to test my heart under pressure.

The results confirmed I do have a rare heart condition, only 1 in 10000 people get it and out of that mostly all male and mostly all over 50 so im somewhat of a rareity:/ which somehow...doesnt bring me comfort!

They cant do anything about it at my hospital, so I have to travel to London sometime in the new year where they are going to put a tube through my leg with a camera (i think) upto my heart, to look at the problem and assess what they can do.

The treatment suggested was to put a wire through my leg upto my heart which would send up high energy radiowaves upto the problem and burn it. However they said if they can get away with leaving it untreated they will, as because I am so young, there is a high chance it will go wrong and I would have to have a pacemaker fitted for life.

Happy Christmas eh lets hope the New Year brings better news

heres a list of some great artists and good friends of mine that you might want to check out ->

As most people whove been following me for a while know, ive been back and forth to the Doctors over the past few years or so and generally come back with nothing.

Well today I had some test results back after having chest pains for 3 months... After I came back off holiday I had several missed calls and letters from my Doctors trying to get in contact with me in regards to my test results.

Christmas is almost here so I decided to be festive and make some reindeer icons

all of these icons belong to people already so if you want one leave me a message in my journal and when I get round to it I will try work through the list, dont just take them.

it seems my reindeers have taken off more than I expected, not that I mind^^ but a few people have wanted to offer a donation as im doing so many, so ive put a donation button on my journal, so if anyone wants to donate anything for a reindeer they can, and I shall put it towards university fund and wedding fund

If you would like a reindeer please leave a comment in my journal with a link to a reference. I do have other art im doing which takes priority so if you dont get your reindeer straight away that is why, but i will be working through them as I go along ^^

Im sorry ive not been updating much ive been sorting out an absolute nightmare.

for those that dont know, my university being the clever people that they are, last year enrolled half the class onto the wrong course.

This caused problems not surprisingly, as it was all the wrong modules. and the people inc myself on the wrong course couldnt see the online course noticeboard on the right course.

locked out.

So over summer the clever uni put out on the course noticeboard after a year of being told that some of the class couldnt see it that there was an assessment over summer.

I knew nothing as couldnt see it, same as some others and only found out when the head of the art and design, rang me on a saturday to tell me he couldnt find me on the system and that he found i was thrown of my course 0_o, this was 2 days before i was due to go back!

So after a meeting with the union, he arranged a meeting with everyone involved and they denied it saying they told us. butt thankfully someone high up was in the office and happened to overhear and step in and backed us up saying that the uni forgot to tell students and letters were not sent out.

so i was allowed back, but only after i did the assessment i missed in summer, this was in the middle of octber which was ok but it meant i wasnt allowed to enroll or join my course until then, this in turn delayed my fees getting paid as the student laon comapny wouldnt do it till i was enrolled.

I made the university look a bit stupid and got them in trouble, then I get a letter through saying the october deadline is now november! a bit annoyed as this meant more time that i couldnt join my course and i was meant to graduate in january.

but they did say in the meeting that i could hand it in early, but then I heard a rumor later found o be true that it didnt matter what time i handed it in they werent going to mark it until november¬¬

the goal posts kept getting moved and me and my housemate discussed the possibility that they were trying to make me quit due to the problems i caused them.

Then I hand the work in 2 weeks early for it to be marked so i could make changes and I dont get it back until the night before the deadline! yeah like i can make so many changes in a few hours! grrrr

So i do what I can and hand it in, and still i cant enroll and join my course by this time the bank are hounding me wanting £500 /$1000 of my student loan back thinking im not a student anymore, I get the tax people taking money off me for the same reason and the council wanting to charge me council tax! all i needed was a simple letter from the uni telling them i was still a student, but they wouldnt.

I went to student services for help but they couldnt help me as the uni wouldnt let them -_-; I had already missed one assessment on my course due to not being allowed to attend, yet apparently if i didnt attend i failed¬¬

so i handed the work in to my tutor anyway.

So times ticking and still i cant enroll! no letters, no emails, no phionecalls... nothing. By this time im getting more than frustrated and ring my student loan comapny to explain the situation and try and get them to release my fees to the uni, but they said thay cant until they get proof im a student by enrolling, and said that even if i enroll tommorow they still cant do anything by december by the time all the forms have been processed >_<

So i go back to student services with a woeful plea of help for any assisstance they can give in the matter at all, but get a blank response as their hands are tied by official rules

So I go back to my university enrollment people and ask them what is going on as im now 2 months behind on a course where i only have 8 weeks left on! and they say..oooh you passed your assessment, and can come back! im like whooooooo!

then the finance office bursts my happy bubble and tell me that my uni might let me back but they wont. As they want my £1700 /$3400 course fees up front! this is what should have been paid by the student loan company like every other student. I was like 0-o;

I was like but...uh... you can't get that until you let me enroll! but they said they wont let me enroll until they get it -_-; so upset i go back to my tutors and tell them what they said, and get told that they will bring it up in a meeting for me.

But I never get an answer from the meeting and that was a week ago so I go back in to have a meeting with my tutor who tells me that he thinks that it is too late for me to join the course its just too late. Even if they were to let me back on i cant continue as ive missed too much :sad: and the only thing I can do is defer till next year. which i really didnt want to do as its just another year of my life wasted at this place.

but with no other option I go back to the administration/enrollment and tell them I need to defer the course,. only to be told that im not allowed to 0_0 apparently according to university rules and regulations you arent allowed to come back like what?! its THEIR fault!

so they tell me my only option is to quit, with two options, quit and accept a diploma that wont get me anywhere. or quit decline the diploma and *try* and come back as a brand new student next year. If this fails and im turned down I lose everything. So ive contacted the union again and informed then what the university is doing.

Then I get told today that the finance office STILL want me to pay them the money for a course ive not been allowed to attend! wth?! and on top of that when I come back (if im allowed) in september they want to charge me all over again! how about...NO!

so at present they have won and have got me off my course but its not over yet¬¬ the other two people in similar situations are talking of telling the press and taking them to court.

heres a list of some great artists and good friends of mine that you might want to check out ->

Now in its eighth year, this important CG conference event plays a strategic role in the UK, bringing together digital visualisation practitioners and users to create new products and forge new partnerships.

SAND 2007 has five themed days of conference covering contemporary issues in CG animation and games, with professional workshops, business seminars and film screenings.

If you are interested in joining the animation or games industry or want to recruit, this is the place to come for excellent networking opportunities and to hear which skills and aptitudes the major players are looking for.

Described by Digital Creative Arts as 'a hotbed for digital talent' we are confident that you will enjoy SAND 2007 and warmly welcome you to Swansea for another amazing and insightful experience in digital visualisation.

Please pass the message on to your friends and colleagues!

PS. We are updating our database, which will only be used to send you information about our events. Please let us know if there are any changes to your details, you wish to add a colleague or have your name removed - just email: SANDadmin@sihe.ac.uk .

SAND events are initiated and organised by The School of Digital Media, Swansea Institute, in partnership with the Welsh Assembly Government and our many other Sponsors.